Last Moments of Light: Sunset at Jockey’s Ridge

Whenever vacation at the beach, my family has certain traditions we always follow; we always go looking for ghost crabs after dark, we get salt-water taffy, we (weather permitting) go to the beach every morning and evening during our stay. During this year’s trip to the Outer Banks, I discovered a new quintessential beach activity: watching the sunrise and sunset.

In the OBX, the sand dunes at Jockey’s Ridge have some of the best visibility of the sunset over the waters of Roanoke Sound. We left the hotel long before sunset so we’d have time to hike up the dunes.

We arrived at Jockey’s Ridge to discover the dunes were quite different from our last visit. When we came a couple years ago, the dunes were sand as far as the eye could see. After the multiple rainstorms that blew by during out stay, a shallow lake had materialized.

We started trekking up to the top of the dunes as the sun dipped below the clouds.

The sun painted the sky with peach and orange hues while darkness started to settle in, giving everything else a dark-aquamarine cast.

There were countless other people on the dunes, sledding down sandy slopes on surfboards, flying kites in the colourful sky, photographing and watching the sunset.